Safety | Security | Effectiveness
Covid-19 Rapid Response
P1F was one of the UK companies to have supported the UK Government and other international trading partners in sourcing critical supply during the Covid-19 pandemic. This work started as a patriotic duty in wanting to help whilst our friends and colleagues were risking their lives in the hospitals, and we were able to mobilise our international small team and merchant banking skill-set to identify resource which these hospitals desperately needed. This started as a charitable venture, where we procured and donated items as part of a crowdfunder campaign amongst friends, where we were then asked by the UK Government to actively procure for them because of the effective supply-chains we had established whilst doing so at-cost.
This highly unique and intensely challenging situation brought the best out of us, our colleagues, and friends, and team-mates across Government, Freight-Forwarders, truck drivers, factory managers etc., and we are immensely proud to have played a major role in this process. As a result, we were appointed a 'Crown Representative' for international trade for this role, branding us as one of the top trusted procurement partners with the Cabinet Office because of the success of our execution, and the trustworthiness and transparency with which we operated. We have subsequently completed all of our mandates during the crisis, delivering over 500m pcs of personal protective equipment for the UK Government, whilst also being called upon by new procurement partners in the US and Australia, where we have actively supported in the same capacity. Our current idea is to support the UK Government or other International Governments in the same capacity (at-cost) if still needed, and to use this opportunity to focus on building those trusted relationships, building on our international ecosystem of high-integrity highly effective people, and proving ourselves in being effective in a crisis.
The entire process has been transparent, where we are happy to share our experience given how unique it was.
Supply-Chain
As part of our campaign, we procured from the following factories (listed below). These were all direct, where we actively managed the factory, provided the trade financing, managed the logistics, customs clearances, and the incredibly challenging international logistics conditions to ensure these critical items reached the UK, Australia, and the US. All of these companies were directly negotiated in Factory by our brilliant team, all of whom deserve recognition for the sacrifice they made, through painstaking negotiation and management, whilst the entire world was fighting for the same items, and this was done by building strong trusted relationships built on integrity, agreed custom, and a sense of purpose to help our friends and colleagues on the frontlines.
Freight-Forwarders
P1F worked with innovative Freight-Forwarder ZenCargo, an incredible international Freight-Forwarding company that has pioneered the use of technology with international freight management, and it has been an honour working with them in delivering these incredibly challenging mandates. P1F have also had the honour to work with Uniserve, the UK Government's main logistics partner, who have been excellent and great partners to work in delivering an unimaginable task of shipping gigantic volumes of critical goods at the height of the pandemic, and still delivering.